


there will be no tenderness

by patrexes



Category: RWBY
Genre: Blind Character, Blood and Injury, Cunnilingus, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Developing Relationship, Episode Tag, Equally Blind Author, Extremely Dubious Consent, F/F, Fuck Or Die, Power Exchange, Recovery, Vitreous Jelly As Lube, Watersports
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-19
Updated: 2019-02-19
Packaged: 2019-10-31 07:21:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17844947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patrexes/pseuds/patrexes
Summary: Love is blind, or something.(“You could call the police now if you wanted,” Tock said when she handed over the scroll.“If I wanted,” Maria agreed.)





	there will be no tenderness

**Author's Note:**

> Uh, yeah. 
> 
> 'Rape' is the word used in-text but XDC is tagged because the common use of the tag is more in line with how the content's handled. The 'coping with blindness' emotional arc is self-indulgent projection. The ship is... as unhealthy as you would expect. The piss is @jonphaedrus' fault and I refuse to be blamed. The vitreous jelly, meanwhile, is _absolutely_ my fault. This is a first draft and as such is precisely first-draft quality.

The Grimm Reaper was pretty under that mask of hers. All young and cocky and bright-eyed, if that last was newly only in a _metaphorical_  sense. She screamed pretty, too. It must’ve hurt something  _awful_.

Tock would have sympathy, if it weren’t that she’d been paid very,  _very_  well for this job. No, really! She wasn’t a  _monster_ , for all her very sharp teeth. Pretty girl like that, she should be screaming for a better kind of reason than her vitreous fluid making a daring escape from behind ruined lids. Tock could forgive the woman for shooting at her too, arm unsteady and shots going wide enough it was charming.  _This_  was the greatest huntress alive.  _This_  is what Tock had done to her.

“You know,” Tock said, biting at the inside of her lip. The tang of blood on her tongue was good company for the Grimm Reaper’s moans. “The only reason my master wants you dead is ‘cos of your eyes. But seein’ as you ain’t got ‘em no more… you  _might_  be able to convince me to spare your life.”

Listen, she never claimed to be a  _good_ person. There was a wide, wide gap between goodness and monstrosity. Tock had seen the latter for herself, and it was as rare and as unsettling as the former.

The Grimm Reaper chucked one of her scythes at her. Even out of ammo, blind, in pain, and  _beaten_ , she was still trying to get a hit in. Tock chuckled. “Well, I respect that,” she said, crouching down beside the woman. “A fighter to the end!”

She had her chin up in hopes of keeping her eyeballs from dripping out too much. It was cute, honestly. Didn’t work too well—the clear fluid, viscous enough it had surface tension, was bulging past the misshapen remains of her corneas to meet the lower ridge of her sockets, and the blood on her cheeks was too wet to provide traction. It’d keep oozing, bringing with it suspended strands of blood and the one delicate piece of her severed eyelid.

The woman’s hand groped for her other scythe, just out of her reach. Tock reached over her, scooping up the bottom of the long handle to toss the scythe end-over-end. “No dice,” Tock told her, inhale hissing past her teeth. “I do like your style, though.”

The woman bit off a groan. “Sore winner, are you?” she managed. “You must have— better things to do— than harass me to death.”

Tock spared a glance to the mercenary huntsmen she’d picked up in town for a distraction, all knocked out with Auras depleted. She rolled her eyes, resting her elbows on her knees as she looked down at the other woman. “Not really,” she said.

“Joy,” the Grimm Reaper said flatly, pushing herself up on her own elbows. Her breath was starting to even out—the adrenaline kicking in, Tock guessed, because she was still sickly pale and bloodless as the goddess she emulated. The woman’s humorless face, streaked with blood and gore, tilted up, giving Tock her first good look at her without the now-shattered skull mask. Her features were soft, even smeared with blood and gore, delicate stretching over the hard lines of her cheekbones and jaw. There were no lines around her mouth; she didn’t smile much. It wasn’t a loss. The set of her lips fit her well. “What do you want?” the woman sneered.

Tock gave an open shrug, lip quirking. She hoped the Grimm Reaper could read the expression in her voice. “What’s on offer?” She reached a hand forward, smearing some of the burst vitreous on her fingertips. She rubbed them together, considering, then unzipped the front panel of her trousers with her other hand. She balanced on the balls of her feet as she curled her spine to push the fabric partway down her thighs, exposing the lips of her cunt to the cool air. The seam of the crotch was wet and sticky with discharge and the onset of arousal.

“Come  _on_ ,” Tock snapped when the Grimm Reaper still remained silent, brow furrowed. “You want to live, don’t you? I’m givin’ you a choice, ‘ere.”

“Are you.” It wasn’t a question.

“I am a right  _gem_  of a murderer,” Tock told her with affected enunciation, slipping her hand between her own thighs, “n’ I just think that— _ah!_ —you could do to be a little more  _grateful_ for the  _noted lack_ of murderin’.” Eyeball muck, for what it was, had a nice feel on one’s clit. On the thick side, but that meant it stayed more or less where she wanted it, and she’d hardly be complaining. When she shifted back on her heels, the waistband of her trousers scraped over the hood of her clit, catching on her piercing. She gave an uneven gasp. “Tick tock, tick tock, time’s  _wastin’_. If I g—get myself off before you make a decision, you’re dead either way.”

The Grimm Reaper sobbed from pain. “You want me to tell you how you can fuck me,” she said, voice small and tight. Whether fear or outrage prevailed, it was hard to tell. Tock didn’t much care either way.

“That’s the—mmm—the  _idea_ , yeah. Fair warnin’, I’m gettin’—”

“My mouth,” she said quickly, biting back a moan. “You can use my mouth.”

Huh. That was a surprise. Tock hadn’t expected her to  _accept_ the offer. Still. “Good girl,” she said fondly, and pulled her trousers up with one hand while she stood.

She kneeled again above the Grimm Reaper’s head, dropping trou all the way to her knees and slipping them under the mess of her hair; a little help, if she needed it. Tock was a considerate lover. “I don’t mind a bit of teeth,” she said as she lowered herself down, “but don’t try anythin’ stupid.”

The first press of her tongue was a hesitant drag up one side of her labia. Tock scoffed, arching to meet her and laughing when the girl gagged on the taste of herself on Tock’s clit. Fisting her hand in her hair, Tock held her in place, rocking into her mouth. “Suck it,” she directed, using two fingers to pull the mons back from her vulva. The movement and proximity caught the Grimm Reaper’s leaking eyes on Tock’s hand and pubic hair, smearing blood and vitreous all over them both. To the woman’s credit, her breath had evened out since the start of this, steady even when her _eyes_  got into her  _nose_. Or—oh,  _damn_ it.

⁂

Maria woke up. This was her first surprise. She was lying on something soft—a bed, she thought, but it was too dark to be sure—with a blanket cocooning her. This was her second surprise. She was in absolutely  _horrible_ pain. This one was less surprising. Pain had been the last thing she remembered, too.

She didn’t have the strength to push herself up, and doubted she was in danger if she’d been cared for and—to judge by the bare skin of her thigh beneath her hand—washed, and she felt like her head was going to  _explode_. Like it might already have done.

 _Fuck_ , her eyes hurt. How many of the grimm had there  _been_ , for her to ache like a little girl again? She pulled a hand free of the blanket that’d been tucked in around her body and reached up to massage her eyes.

“Mm,” said a voice. Familiar. “Don’t do  _that_.”

It was a particularly unlikeable voice. Maria was angry with it, though she couldn’t place why. She continued to reach up—found something soft and padded over her eye. A sleep mask? She pressed her fingers in at the upper edge of her eye socket. At least with a bit of pressure she’d be able to  _think_.

A hand grabbed hers. Peeled her fingers back. “No,” the voice said. “ _Actually_. I ain’t lettin’ you stab your brain after all the trouble I went to to save your life.”

Maria remembered where the voice was from. She remembered why everything was dark. Her chest felt tight; she took a shaky breath that didn’t help at all. “You,” she started, and stopped. “Why didn’t you kill me?” Another breath, and another, and another. Maria felt like she was drowning. “Let go of my hand. Let  _go_ of me.”

The woman—the one who took her eyes, the one who _raped_ her, oh gods—loosed her hold. “You passed out,” she said, sounding maybe a foot further back. Too close. “Blood loss. I brought you back, uh, back to this cabin I’ve got. Cleaned you up. You’re welcome,” she added pointedly, like anything she’d done warranted thanks.

Maria felt cold creep down her spine. She pushed herself upright, the blanket falling to her waist, and felt at the thick layers of gauze over her eyes before bracketing herself with her arms on what she now realized was a sofa. She swallowed back vulnerability she wasn’t in a position to do anything about. “Why?”

Her throat was so dry.

“I like to consider myself a lady of my word,” the woman said after a moment, carefully. Consideringly. Maria would bet good lien she didn’t actually  _know_ why. “Of course, if you did want to bleed out after all, there’s knives in the kitchen. Be my guest.”

“You got paid to kill me,” Maria pressed. “Didn’t you? So why did you—” her voice caught on the words “—change your mind,” she finished, weakly and angry about it. She was a  _huntress_ , saw the worst of the world every day. She willingly chose debasement for her life. This shouldn’t be  _affecting_ her so badly.

“I got  _paid_ ,” her would-be assassin said defensively, “to decommission them eyes of yours. After that, the job was done.” Which was bullshit, because silver eyes ran in families. If Maria lived, she could have children. Anyone who wanted her gone would want her  _gone_. “Trackin’ you out here was miserable; figured, you were pretty, I ‘adn’t got a good fuck in a while… May as well get some  _fun_  out of the whole mess.”

“That’s it?”

“…Just about, yeah. Ain’t  _deep_ , sweetheart.”

⁂

The bitch with no impulse control and no self awareness went by Tock, and on top of having apparently no idea she was experiencing the phenomenon of a guilty conscience, she was also a shit cook.

“If your boss is making you finish the job after all,” Maria told her, squishing half-cooked meat between her fingers, “at least have the balls to do it kinder than food poisoning.”

She got a scoff for her trouble. “I think even a weak human stomach can ‘andle some wild rabbit.”

“Not  _raw_ , it can’t.” Good to know, though, what kind of fur was stuck in her teeth.

“It isn’t raw,” Tock insisted, then added doubtfully, “It’s supposed to be that color.” Cutlery scraped against the ceramic plate. “Ah. Hm.”

The table fell into silence. Maria picked though her food with her fingers to find things that hadn’t recently had a pulse and wasn’t likely to make her ill.

Eventually, Tock cleared her throat. “Now you’re ‘ealed up some and ain’t gone septic, don’t you think you might be best off in some kind of rehab ‘ospital?” Maria’d wondered how long it would take for Tock to cycle back around to that awkward carefulness; she would be snide and hesitant in turns, like she occasionally remembered she should be ashamed of herself and just couldn’t stay in the habit of acting it.

Maria would roll her eyes if she had any. “Oh, now that I’m  _not_  dying, you want me in a hospital?”

In all honesty, it hadn’t been so bad. Tock had done—and Maria was  _endlessly_  bitter about this—a fantastic job scraping clean her eye sockets and stitching the skin closed over them, so there’d been no infection for her body to fight off. Once she’d woken up and stopped herself panicking, it was only a matter of engaging her Aura to heal what remained.

Maria was almost  _angry_ about it. Her eyes had gone  _literally_ down the kitchen sink’s drain, but she wasn’t hurting, didn’t carry any scars. It was too easy, too painless for something that left her feeling so—so  _vulnerable_.

It was a kind of vulnerability that felt bone-deep, nakedness that couldn’t be solved with her assailant-cum-savior putting a neatly folded stack of her fresh-washed clothes in her lap with a voiced warning and careful not to touch. Every time she tried to do anything for herself, something that should have been  _easy_ , Maria was reminded of her newfound helplessness and the fact she was wholly dependent on a woman who’d violated her. Every unsteady step she took with a hand trailing the wall and hoping she wouldn’t trip on some unknown obstacle filled her with a catastrophizing fear, a  _this is the rest of your life_ , and Maria hated the idea almost as much as she hated the fact it came to her in the first place.

“You need  _help_ ,” Tock said, enunciating so harshly it changed her pronunciation. “ _Real_  ‘elp, from somebody with trainin’. I may be  _stupid_ , but I ain’t dumb. There’s people who can teach you to get around again, do—do fuckin’  _chores_  n’ all that.”

A flash of irritation. “You’re not getting rid of me,” Maria said.

“I’m not tryin’ to—”

“Yes, you are,” Maria snapped. “Don’t play this like anything else. You don’t like being  _guilty_ , and you want me out of your house. That’s all this  _fucking_  is, so don’t—don’t act like you’re… doing me some kind of  _favor_. This is  _your_ fuck-up, you don’t get to f–foist me off on some kind of asylum—”

“Rehab center,” Tock corrected faintly. “They have training, orientation and mo—”

“ _Shut up._ You don’t get to get rid of me because having me around makes you  _feel_  bad, okay? You break it, you fucking buy it.  _I_ feel like s– _shit_ , and  _you’re_  the one who made every single gods-damned decision that landed me here, so you can—can  _put_   _on_  your big girl pants and  _deal_  with it.” She could taste salt on her lips.

“Oh, no,” Tock said unhappily. “Don’t…  _cry_.” She heaved a loud sigh. “What the fuck am I supposed to do here?” she said, in a voice that suggested she wasn’t looking for any real answers. Maria didn’t have any to give her, so that was probably for the best.

All the rage and sublimated terror seemed to have drained out of her now. She was just… tired, and she was still hungry, and the way her fingers pressed into skin pulled taut over the empty space of her sockets when she wiped at her eyes ground Maria firmly back to a present she didn’t want to be in.

⁂

They fell into a strange rhythm over the next few weeks. Tock spent half her time on her scroll, finding resources meant for the parents of small children and then flitting around the cabin to implement the suggested changes. Dots of hot glue made it onto the front of the stove to demarcate the more commonly used temperatures, and onto a sheet of thin film that was cut to fit over Maria’s scroll, making a tactile guide to the number pad if not the more complicated functions; there were scrolls designed to have full functionality for the blind, but none they could get in some backwoods town in Mistral.

“You could call the police now if you wanted,” Tock said when she handed over the scroll.

“If I wanted,” Maria agreed.

For some reason, she hadn’t. Tock sure wouldn’t have blamed her.

All things considered, she was doing well. She was comfortable moving around the house now, though Tock wasn’t sure Maria herself had noticed. She was steadier on her feet, her body becoming used to balancing without sight to help, and when her hand came up to trail the wall it was only a habitual afterthought. What was going on in her head, of course, Tock couldn’t say, but Maria didn’t _seem_ likely to fall apart on her.

Which brought her to this. “We should go outside.”

Maria unburied her head from a pile of blankets, a soft voice coming from the scroll revealed with the movement. “Unless you’ve got a call, I suppose,” Tock added, taken somewhat aback. With humor, she added, “How long do I have to make my darin’ escape?”

“It’s a book,” Maria said, tapping around the screen until she found the way to shut the low voice off. “Why are we going outside?” She pushed herself upright.

“I’ve got somethin’ to show you. Besides, full moon tonight, n’ it’s almost sunset. Figured I could get in some good jibes on what all you’re missin’ out on.”

“Hah,” Maria said blandly. That had probably been too far.

“Really, though,” Tock said, a hint of desperation coloring her voice. “You’ll like this, I think.”

She wouldn’t call it _guilt_. Tock wasn’t sure she’d ever felt _bad_ about something she’d done, _really_ bad, anyway, and when she thought about the incident, overwhelmingly she thought, _that was some pretty good sex_. Even when Maria had lost consciousness, what might have been boring from anyone else was _the famous Grimm Reaper_ limp and helpless beneath her, and she’d arched into Maria’s slack mouth as she came.

But usually Tock didn’t have the consequences of her actions so… in her face afterwards. She didn’t like it. And she didn’t like introspection neither.

Maria followed her out back, one hand gripping her shoulder. “Are you going to tell me what we’re doing out here?” she asked, a terse note in her voice. Discomfort, Tock guessed, at the uneven ground beneath her feet.

“Give me a mo’,” she responded off-handedly. “‘Ere we are! I’m about to put somethin’ in your hand, all clear?”

Maria frowned as she explored the long tool with her hands. “What is this?”

“Well,” Tock said. “It’s only a prototype, really, n’ I wouldn’t go so far to say I’m _crafty_. But it’s somethin’ to practice with, ain’t it? Get back into the—hah—the _swing_ of things, you know?”

“Tock,” Maria said warningly, the setting sun casting a long shadow over half her face.

“It’s a fancy little multitool,” Tock explained. “One of those canes the blind use, with a little rotating tip, n’, ah—” she took the liberty of shifting Maria’s hand up, placing her thumb over a trick button “—press _that_ , n’ it converts itself into a scythe.”

“Oh,” Maria said softly.

“The weight’s probably a bit wonky,” Tock warned, “but it should be fine. I ‘ave faith you’ll be as lethal as ever in no time.”

“I don’t—”

“Oh, shut up,” Tock said, stepping back and pulling a wooden practice blade. Maria’s was real steel, but it was unsharpened and she’d never fought blind before, so Tock figured she was probably safe enough. She tapped the side of Maria’s weapon with the tip of her own. “Let’s spar.”

And so they did. The sunset came and went, leaving them in the dark but for the light of the shattered moon, but neither the blind woman nor the faunus found herself bothered. Hesitant movements soon became sure as Maria let herself focus not on what was _different_ in this fight from her last, but on what was the same, allowing muscle memory to overtake her fear.

And _damn_ , she was good.

“You’re usin’ your Semblance,” Tock complained, wiping sweat out of her face. “ _Cheater_.”

It was a good Semblance, and worked amazingly with her new disability. If Tock was one to be superstitious, she’d say it was like Maria was _meant_ to be blind.

Maria laughed, real and sincerely _happy_ for the first time since Tock had so unceremoniously met her. “Use yours, then, if you’re scared.”

“I’m not _scared_ ,” Tock complained, hand drifting to her side. “Sixty seconds,” she warned. “No holds barred.”

“All right,” said Maria, and shifted her hands on the scythe, held low so she could test the ground with it. Her face was hard, but joyful, and in the shine of the moon, she _glowed_.

Tock tapped her alarm clock, and for the next minute, she was invulnerable. Their weapons clashed almost too quickly for her to follow, and Maria pivoted expertly to meet Tock’s blows as she moved around her, staying nearly statue-still herself. An intent, predatory look creased her brow.

And then time was up, and both their Auras fell. Their breath came hard, and an uncertainty came back into Maria’s features as Tock guided her back indoors.

“You should know,” Tock said, a long moment after Maria angled the retracted scythe in the doorway and made her way back to the sofa, “that I’m attracted to you.”

Maria’s face was unreadable. “Don’t do this again,” she said quietly.

“I understand that’s not somethin’ you want to hear from me,” Tock said, “n’ I’ll cover— whatever you need, to get settled somewhere…”

“I _said_ ,” Maria ground out, “don’t _do_ this again. Stop trying to get me to _leave_ , Tock.”

“I _thought_ you’d want full disclosure your rapist wants to _fuck_ you!”

Maria’s mouth opened, then closed again. She raised a hand to her temple. “Didn’t I already have that?”

Tock huffed half a laugh out of her lungs. “That weren’t attraction, luv.”

Maria’s raised hand wiggled, lips curling into a snide, condescending little smile. Tock didn’t like that she didn’t seem on edge at all. This shouldn’t be one-sided. “Debatable,” Maria said.

“It’s about _power_ ,” Tock started—

Maria’s head was tilted towards her own, an inscrutable expression on her face, playing at her lips. “If you want to fuck me,” she said, calm as the eye of a storm, “you can.”

—and stopped. “What?”

“Either sex is about attraction, or it’s about power. You’ve got one, I wouldn’t mind the other, and a little _crush_ isn’t your ticket to getting rid of me.” Tock’s exhale came in a rush of breath. “You want me?” Maria asked, brows high. She nodded to the floor in front of her. “Get on your knees.”

To say that she did would damn her compliance with faint praise. Tock collapsed to the hard wooden floor in a single movement that reverberated through the sofa and table and left her hissing with pain, and she crawled between Maria’s spread thighs.

Maria took Tock’s hair in hand and raised her skirts with the other, angling her hips for Tock’s mouth. She was wearing panties still, and both they and her thighs were soaked with sweat from their sparring. Tock reached up to pull them down. “No,” said Maria, and pressed her down.

Tock tasted salt and cotton, and she tried her best to stimulate Maria’s clit through the fabric, flicking her tongue with as much pressure as she could. As the fabric was soaked through further with Tock’s spit and Maria became aroused, Tock could feel the shape of her through the panties. Her own clit throbbed.

Her hand slid against Maria’s shin as she tried to reach between her own legs. “Did I say you could do that?” Maria asked, voice breathy but firm. Tock glanced up from between her legs to see Maria’s hand disappearing into the neckline of her dress to pinch her own tit. Her hand twisted roughly beneath the fabric.

“…No ma’am,” Tock said, cheeks burning. She nuzzled at the wet fabric over Maria’s cunt.

“If you want to touch yourself,” Maria told her, “then beg for it.”

Tock seethed. “May I touch myself?” she asked.

“No,” Maria said, and then, “That’s hardly _begging_.”

What _was_ , Tock didn’t know, because she pleaded her way through Maria’s first orgasm and then a second to no avail. Her cunt clenched around nothing. “Please, _please_ , ma’am, let me—please, may I touch myself? I’ll do whatever you want, I—”

“You’re already doing whatever I want,” Maria noted, breathing hard, then finally told her, “All right.” But before Tock could snake her hand between her thighs, she said, “Pinch your breasts. Both hands. Use your nails.”

Tock whined, but did as ordered. Blood welled up under her nails. “ _Please_ ,” she moaned, mouthing at Maria’s swollen cunt. “Ma’am, please…”

Maria brought her own hand down to feel Tock’s handiwork at her bared breasts, pinching a nipple between her fingertips and twisting as she pulled. Tock keened into her. “Your cunt belongs to me,” Maria told her coldly. “ _You_ belong to me. I should put you in a chastity belt. You don’t _deserve_ to touch yourself.”

Tock shuddered between her legs. Even untouched, she was close. “What do I deserve?” she whispered.

“This,” Maria said, and she held Tock in place between her legs as she pissed herself. It soaked through her panties, streamed into Tock’s mouth and over her face, her tits, her hands. “Touch yourself,” Maria said. “Get yourself off while you’re drinking my piss.”

Slipping a urine-soaked hand into her trousers, Tock curled two fingers into her cunt and rubbed her clit roughly with her thumb as she fucked herself. Maria in underwear, there was no way to aim the weak stream of piss into her mouth: Tock had to suckle at the cotton panties, open-mouthed, and hope. It was a messy business, and when she came it was with piss drying cold on her face and tits.

⁂

“What does this mean,” Tock asked quietly afterward, curled up at Maria’s feet, “for… ‘us’?”

“It means you’re never getting eaten out again,” Maria said firmly, her fingers curled in Tock’s short hair.

Tock considered this. “That’s fair enough,” she said.


End file.
